


Reunion

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Creature Court Trilogy - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Genre: F/F, Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 07:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21831976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: Evie returns to Aufleur. Livilla can be persuaded that it's not the absolute worst decision that Evie could have made. Maybe.
Relationships: Evie Inglirra (Creature Court Trilogy)/Livilla (Creature Court Trilogy)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



Livilla waits until she’s out of earshot of the others and then demands, 'Are you mad, or just stupid?'

Evie detaches herself from the shadows. Despite her anger and exhaustion, Livilla’s eyes widen appreciatively; Evie looks downright dapper in her dark trousers, shirt, and vest. A jaunty blue bow tie adds a touch of colour, while a flat cap does somewhat to hide Evie’s face. She could be any young man coming home from a night’s carousing, except that Livilla can’t smell alcohol on her. Awful cologne, yes, and sweat, and some kind of cosmetick powder.

Really, all she can smell is _Evie_.

'And here I thought I’d got the knack of men’s fashion,' Evie says self-deprecatingly.

'Oh, you have.' Livilla doesn’t know whether to slap her or kiss her. 'But you still _smell_ like you, you little fool. What the frig do you think you’re doing here?'

Evie looks up at the sky. The sky is no longer aflame as it was an hour ago, and now the fireworks that have been sporadically going off all night have an uninterrupted stage. 'Word has gotten around,' she says slowly, 'that there are some very fascinating astronomical happenings of late.'

'Word should stay where it was damn well sent.' Livilla hooks her arm through Evie’s, privately worried that a curious cat or roving rat might chance down their side alley at any moment. 'If it doesn’t want to be untimely erased.' She walks them briskly through back streets, taking a roundabout route to her—well, it’s not exactly a _secret_ lair, but it’s the one where they’re least likely to be bothered, because she usually only uses it at the time of the month when she is very _specifically_ grumpy and unapproachable.

Evie has the nous to keep her mouth shut on the way. 

Once they’re in the lair, though:

'What can I see?' Evie asks the second the door closes, pale-cheeked below the cosmetick that shapes her face into something more angular, more masculine.

'How can you see it?' Livilla asks in the same moment, Evie’s hands between hers, afraid that if she lets go someone will snatch Evie away again.

'I don’t know,' they say in unison.

Livilla sighs and tugs Evie towards the bed. ‘Come on.’

‘It certainly is,’ Evie says. ‘I thought we’d at least have brunch first.’

‘I am _not_ going to attempt to figure out how it is that you can see the sky when I’m this tired. I’m going to assume you only just arrived in Aufleur, because I would have known if it had been earlier.’ Livilla lets go of Evie’s hands. ‘Take your boots off, and anything else you don’t want smelling like dog, and lie down, will you?’

She becomes wolves without waiting for Evie to respond, one large, one small. They leap onto the bed, the larger of the two settling immediately, the smaller standing on the foot of the bed until Evie’s unlaced her boots and stripped down to her undergarments. Well—almost. A corset laced tight over her chest in particular is the last thing to come off, Evie popping the busk open and shedding it with a complicated yet practiced wriggle, breathing a sigh of relief.

‘You don’t smell like dog,’ is her only remark as she lies down with Livilla.

The larger wolf snorts. The smaller wolf just lies down once Evie is settled, so that she is cuddled warmly between the two of them.

Livilla’s nerves are all firing at once, for a number of different reasons, but when Evie emits one soft snore she allows the tension to leave her. They might yet be discovered, but she is tired enough and warm enough to let that be future Livilla’s problem.

Livilla sleeps.

* * *

Not only does Livilla not wake up until the smell of ciocolata and pastries hits her nose, she wakes up to Evie with a semi-triumphant look on her face, although it’s tempered with concern.

‘It’s the stellar,’ she announces, pressing a steaming mug into Livilla’s hands.

‘Did you go _outside_?’ Livilla asks, and then, ‘Who’s the stellar? Where?’

‘Yes.’ Evie bites into a pastry, chews with evident pleasure, swallows, as though Livilla’s following questions were about the temperature outdoors and if it’s raining. ‘And she—it’s not here. No. I mean that’s why I could see—’ She tilts her face towards the ceiling. ‘What you see. What you _fight_. It connected us.’

‘Could you see it from wherever you’re living?’ Livilla glares at her over the ciocolata. ‘Because if you’re living close enough to Aufleur to see the sky—’

‘No.’ Evie offers her the bag of pastries. ‘I...’ She hesitates. ‘I didn’t know if the information I heard about strange lights and noises in the sky was real or nonsense. I imagined that it was someone mistaking fireworks for something fanciful. But it intrigued me.’

‘You’re not here on a contract, are you?’

Evie shakes her head, still holding the bag of pastries out. ‘I’m only here out of curiosity—and because the closer I got to the city, the stronger the need to see you became.’

Livilla raises an eyebrow, finally plucking a pastry from the bag. ‘Oh? Is that another _stellar_ thing?’

‘No. It’s just you.’

Livilla takes the time to set the mug down carefully, but her apple puff tumbles to the blankets as she reaches for Evie.

* * *

‘You could still have stayed away. You _should_ have stayed away,’ Livilla says afterwards.

Evie snorts against her bare shoulder. ‘Your idea of pillow talk is abysmal.’

‘It’s not safe for you to be here.’

‘And it’s not _interesting_ for me to be—’ Evie bites her tongue.

‘Wherever you were.’ Livilla kisses the top of Evie’s head. ‘I understand.’

‘Given the circumstances under which we first met, I should think so.’

Livilla sighs. ‘Do you have a _plan_ for being back in Aufleur, or are you just going to wander the city until someone not as nice as me finds you? I can’t promise that this lair will always be safe or private.’

‘I gave up on expectations of both safety and privacy years ago.’

Well. _That_ , Livilla can empathise with. 'So...'

'I know I can’t mask my scent, but if it’s not all over everything here for—anyone else to pick up on it—’ Livilla does not miss Evie’s hesitance to commit to _Poet_ or _Garnet_ or any other name ‘—then they won’t immediately realise I’m back in the city. If any of them even remember it.’

‘I can at least assure you none of them will remember it as well as _I_ do,’ Livilla says, ‘but I wouldn’t rule it out.’

‘Mmmm. So I’ve been cultivating a different persona. Something of a night owl. Very pale and mysterious. Wears a lot of black.’

‘So far,’ Livilla says, ‘I’m not sure that you and I have the same definition of ‘different’.’

Evie prods Livilla’s side with a fingertip. ‘A young man, though. One with a poor enough understanding of style that he overdoes his cologne, particularly if he knows it’s going to be—’ her eyes flicker to the low ceiling ‘—a busy night.’

‘Have you considered a moustache?’

‘A goatee,’ Evie admits.

‘We’ll make one from real hair.’ Livilla’s mind is properly ticking over with options now, since Evie’s no more likely to go away again than she is to open her tiny bag and reveal a full flapper costume. ‘So it doesn’t smell odd either.’ She glances at Evie’s discarded clothing. ‘And something better than that wretched corset to bind your breasts with, if you _must_ do it. You’ll damage yourself.’

‘I know. I couldn’t think of anything better.’ Evie gives Livilla a not at all demure smile. ‘I imagine you have ideas, though.’

Livilla does have ideas, and the first two are her hands.

* * *

All things considered, Livilla has been known to engage in rather more dangerous pastimes than harbouring a fugitive. 

But as she watches Evie—or now, Vannevar—make her—no, _his_ , damn it—way with a bit of a swagger in his step along alleys and streets, passing from her lair along a circuitous route that will take him to accommodation that _isn’t_ specifically marked out as belonging to Livilla, she can’t help but think that this is a risk worth taking.

It still doesn’t entirely make sense. Could Evie truly have gained some sort of understanding from the stellar? If so, why wait until now to come back, at a time that’s undoubtedly _more_ rather than less dangerous than any other? She doesn’t have powers beyond her quick mind and artful words, assassinations aside. She doesn’t have the _right_ powers. She’s intelligent, but even Livilla has difficulty comprehending the tumult and upheaval of the world at the moment.

As Livilla watches E— _Vannevar_ —cross the street, his steps turned towards a building offering a room that no doubt belongs to someone or other’s aunt, Vannevar’s eyes flicker up to the darkening sky, and so do Livilla’s.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s because _now_ is when Livilla needs her most. Someone who _doesn’t_ know, someone who isn’t entangled in all this mess. Someone from outside of it all.

Leaping skywards, Livilla knows there’s no peace to be found in Aufleur, but perhaps now she can find some semblance of it, if only a few hours at a time.

She can keep fighting for that.


End file.
